Conventionally, to cause a head part of a rail to have the fine pearlitic microstructure to improve wear resistance and toughness of the rail, forcible cooling with the coolant such as air or water has been performed on the head part (a head top part and a head side part) of a high-temperature rail immediately after hot rolling or a high-temperature rail heated to an austenitic temperature range for heat treatment after hot rolling. In this case, if only the head part of the rail is forcibly cooled, an asymmetrical temperature range is formed in the vertical direction of the rail, so that the rail may be largely bent due to a stress existing inside the rail after cooling. So an underside of the base of the rail is also forcibly cooled.
Patent Literature 1 discloses a porous plate having cooling nozzle holes for forcibly cooling a rail. Patent Literature 2 discloses a technique for preventing a rail after forcible cooling from bending by starting forcible cooling of an underside of the base of the rail earlier than forcible cooling of a head part of the rail to precool the underside of the base. Patent Literature 3 discloses a technique for uniformizing hardness of a rail in the longitudinal direction by controlling a discharge amount of air for forcible cooling toward the vicinity of an end of the rail.